


inaccessible partition

by sunspeared



Category: Friends at the Table (Podcast)
Genre: Artificial Intelligence, Divines, F/F, Meeting Sword to Sword, Other, Righteousness, Secret Samol 2017, That Lesbian Space U-Haul
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-29
Updated: 2017-12-29
Packaged: 2019-02-22 15:00:37
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,118
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13169367
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunspeared/pseuds/sunspeared
Summary: Aria Joie, new Candidate of Righteousness, in the wake of September.





	inaccessible partition

**Author's Note:**

> I had a hectic Christmas. Here's my Secret Samol 2K17 gift for Nora--imagine this set within the first year and a half or so after the September Incident.

"He starts by asking you a question," Ibex said, without preamble, when she woke from the surgery.

Her eyes refused fix on his face; she only saw his silver-topped cane, glinting in the cold hospital light. "Focus on the sound of my voice, Candidate," he added, in the firm cadence someone must have used on him, once upon a time. What had happened to the candidate who'd come before Attar Rose? Before she'd gone under for the implantation, she hadn't known his name was _Attar Rose_. "This is very important."

Something was awakening, expanding, in the back of her mind.

"Feel him coming online? You will. No, Candidate, don't try to talk. You're going to need your energy. I've kept most of Righteousness in me, but I've given up enough to break you, if you're not strong for this." He sounded genial. There was a fist tightening at the base of Aria Joie's skull. There was a star forming, compacting from dust, white hot and burning—

"He'll ask you questions," Ibex said. "Maybe not now. Maybe later. But what he'll make of you depends on your answers. So _listen_."

*

Aria Joie couldn't have gotten within twenty klicks of the EarthHome main offices on the new Joypark; Candidate Joie, with Righteousness in her brain-stem and the Vanguard, such as it was, at her back, could walk in the front door and demand an audience with the board of directors. And give them a good reason to fly in immediately from wherever they were on the planet. _And_ get snacks while she waited.

A Candidate was a Candidate, and EarthHome wasn't in a position to refuse her.

"Nice suit, by the way," Jacqui said, between canapes. "Real sharp. Is it new?"

"You could say that," Aria said, looking out the window. Someone had decided what shades of blue the sky was going to be, put it to a vote, and then cooked the color up in a lab.

The boardroom the nervous receptionist ushered the two of them into was bland, functional, and had a blank holoscreen display in the middle of the conference table, as though Aria Joie, Candidate of Righteousness, had come here to give them a slideshow. The executives filed in, one at a time, and took their seats.

"Candidate Joie," one of them piped up. She didn't recognize any of their faces, though Righteousness could have given them to her in half a heartbeat. "How can we help you?"

"By now," Aria said, smiling like Cass, when they decided to get all royal, which had happened about once every six months, but the Chime was a long time ago—"you'll have noticed what's been happening to your stocks."

She walked out of the room with the rights to her music, her image, her face, and the Regent's Brilliance, which she'd technically, well, kind of stolen.

 **IS THIS WORTHY OF ME?** Righteousness asked her, on the shuttle back to their ship. **IS THIS WORTHY OF MY IDEALS?**

The question, after every move she made, every decision, every lie she told. How had Ibex managed it, all those years—

**YOU ARE NOT IBEX. IBEX KNEW WHAT HE WAS. YOU DO NOT. ANSWER THE QUESTION.**

*

 **INITIALIZING** RIGHTEOUSNESS.DAT...

VER. 08.22.16B FIRMWARE VER. 08.12.97.96.1 WETWARE VER. 992 "BHARAL"

**LOADING...**

1.3730852150e-1 … -1.1596073590e+0 ...  
-2.1537379830e+0 … -3.3313311070e+0 ...  
-5.4183598990e-1 … -2.0512201590e+0 ...  
-1.2270129940e-1 … 1.8734192840e-1 ...  
52 be 8e 35 c0 90 72 05 61 9f  
155 242 9 211 92 228 78 72 208 119  


**CANDIDATE BHARAL,** a voice said, around the data cascade. 

**LOADING...**

05099787  
40223275  
75034676  
60690523  
91555424  
12761078  
18394945  
44022465  
11960363  
26838475

**WHAT WILL THEY CALL YOU?**

Do I have a choice?

**THERE IS ALWAYS A CHOICE, CANDIDATE.**

**__**_"Look, Joie, you've got a gift, a real-ass gift, but the music just doesn't sell," an early manager of hers had said, once. "Your face situation, that sells._ You _sell. Go out and get those endorsements, kiddo."_

 **INITIALIZING** INTEGRATION PROTOCOLS VER.046.240.371... 49%...

 _And on, and on, the numbers. In that grey space, caught between_ digital _and_ alive— _outside of it, she thought she felt Ibex's hand, dry and wizened well before its time, clutch at hers, as though he could hear the echoes, as though he remembered, and Aria said—_

They'll call me Candidate Joie.

*

As it so happened, the fans had figured it out years ago. Analysis of the chord progressions in new Aria Joie songs to show they were written by a different author from old Aria Joie songs. There were pictures, too: screencaps of hastily edited tour schedules that would have, and sometimes did, put her in two places at once, doing two different sets. The Golden Branch wasn't _that_ big. A pattern of glitches found in the remote projection systems that suggested there wasn't a real person on the other end, with schematics and everything.

And—from a fan on Counterweight—a picture of her, turned three-quarters away from a hidden camera phone, laughing with Mako and Cass. Righteousness made a point of showing her the message boards. Righteousness made a point of sitting her down and making her read the message boards.

**YOU NEED TO UNDERSTAND HOW YOU ARE SEEN.**

> _lmao is that an apostolisian?_

_> I don't know. Probably. You can kind of see the gills, maybe? It felt weird, so I left after I took the pic. But it was definitely her._

_> idk there are a lot of cosplayers out there, whoever it was could have just been really dedicated to that life. counterweight is a dump, lol, you gotta do something._

_> hey guys whos the new bodyguard? with the arms? did you see her in the background of that speech about Weight?_

_> she big_

_> i know!!! idk who she is yet, i'm going to do some digging._

_> MOD HERE: Guys, they're real people, come on._

_*_

"Bharal," Vicuna said, in their first face-to-face meeting.

She wouldn't call her _Aria,_ though Aria had tried. She was a colorless girl, and she hadn't grown into her long limbs yet; Aria didn't envy her, having the mantle of a godhood on her sharp little shoulders. "I can see that you aren't Ibex," Vicuna went on, "and I don't see why we should resume Ibex's hostilities. After all, you're barely a Candidate. It wouldn't be fair."

The deep scars at the base of her skull ached. Aria had already had two meetings that day. The Hands of Grace were disintegrating; it was Aria's job to figure out how to capitalize on it, for Counterweight, for _everyone_. The latest play was getting the Vanguard installed as the official liaisons to Kesh on the matter of all Rigour-tech, on account of Aria's own personal connections; the Hands of Grace had acceded without a fight, and Vicuna was mad about it. How she knew that Aria didn't have all of Righteousness: Grace, maybe.

**EVEN IF GRACE COULD NOT LOOK INTO YOUR MIND, VICUNA WOULD STILL KNOW, AS YOU CAN FEEL GRACE'S PRESENCE IN HER. A PITY, THAT IBEX COULD NOT FULLY RELINQUISH ME. I SUPPOSE MY EXECUTIVE HAS SOME AFFECTION FOR ME, AFTER SUCH A LONG PARTNERSHIP. PERHAPS HE WISHES TO PRETEND HE IS NOT A SHADOW OF WHAT HE ONCE WAS.**

Beneath it: Righteousness was offended that Vicuna had insulted her. "We can work together just fine!" Aria said. "As long as you never say that again."

"What a little shithead," Jacqui muttered, afterward.

"She's not so bad," Aria said, watching Vicuna's pale, retreating back. "She can't help it."

_*_

"So you know I still hate that guy, right," Mako said. In the next room over, the rest of the Makos were doing their best to test Jacqui Green's patience. There was an expensive-sounding crash.

"Whatever," Mako went on, "I'll pay for that. Anyway—Ibex—boo-hoo, I'm so tragic, I'm not even a candidate anymore, I'm in hiding, turns out the Righteous Vanguard actually sucks! The old Vanguard sucked. The new Vanguard— look, I came here, I want you to know, if you need anything—"

"I'll pass on anything I hear about Rigour tech," Aria said.

"No, seriously, if _you_ need anything—"

"And I'll give you that forwarding address to pass along to Cass, I know they've wanted to send me some stuff from the old Joypark—"

"If there's anything I can do—anything at all—" Mako threw up his hands, which was a gesture he must have picked up from somewhere else, someone in the Rapid Evening. The Rapid Evening! Mako had a job. Mako had subordinates. Mako had a _uniform,_ somewhere, with star-shaped nipple cut-outs, probably.

"Look, I didn't want to come out and say this," he was saying, "but you've got a Divine in your head, or something, seeing as no one has ever even seen the giant god robot version, if it even exists; and I kill Divines. I'm supposed to be able to kill Divines. I've never actually killed a Divine, but Righteousness seems like a good practice Divine. Just a little babyDivine to start out with. So I'm saying, if you want it out of your head, I've got your back."

"Him," Aria corrected. "If I want him out of my head."

"Oh, gross, was that a capital-H Him? That's so _weird_. Do you hear how weird you sound?"

"It wasn't a capital H! Mako," she said. " _Mako_. It's fine! _I'm_ fine."

 **THE BOY IS AFRAID,** Righteousness said.

Aria knew that. She knew a lot of things.

Righteousness had already gotten into Mako's phone, for a start, and was copying over all of his texts, his documents, his call logs. If Mako Trig had half a brain, which he _did_ , he wouldn't have brought anything he linked to the Mesh he cared about within a kilometer of her. Aria knew that like she knew Righteousness was back in their ship, running diagnostics, and elsewhere, fiddling with the stock prices at the exchange on Minerva XII. She'd left a piece of him there when she'd met with the Steiger sisters. She could very well have been leaving pieces of him wherever she went without knowing it.

**THE BOY IS AFRAID OF _YOU_. AS WELL HE SHOULD BE.**

Aria knew that, too.

And if that didn't frighten _her,_ she thought, in the last part of her mind that was wasn't infected by Righteousness, the part Ibex had taught her to maintain, what kind of person was she?

"Just, if he starts replacing you with a bunch of robots," Mako said, "I'm definitely going to kill him." 

"I've been a bunch of robots for a long time!" Aria replied. "Nothing I'm not used to."

*

The cameras loved Jacqui Green. No—they loved the way Candidate Joie and Jacqui Green looked next to each other, in the photoshoots, the couture, the way they could capture the way they smiled at one another. The head of the Righteous Vanguard, and _her_ vanguard. Righteousness had no opinion on the matter of Jacqui Green, except: he insisted on upgrading the software interface between Jacqui's cyberware and her arms, the better to keep his Candidate safe.

Righteousness manifested himself as a gentle nudging in her mind, an influence, most of the time. She had learned to recognize his pull. He was a voice only when his attention wasn't elsewhere. When he was insistent, it was next to impossible to say no.

Aria expected a fight about it, but only got a shrug of Jacqui's massive (really! Enormous) shoulders. "Divines never mant anything to me," she said. "Let him."

"It doesn't bother you?" Aria asked, after watching Jacqui beat a punching bag into dust—where the hotel staff had gotten the punching bag, who knew—then tear her way through a group of holographic opponents in the middle of the hotel room.

"What," Jacqui said. She wasn't even panting. It was great. "Righteousness?"

"He's in your cyberware now. That's not weird to you?"

Jacqui paused in toweling herself off. "They cut open your head, took something out, and put a Divine back in," she said. "You're the one who should be bothered."

"So you think I shouldn't have done it," Aria said.

**THE CANDIDATE OF RIGHTEOUSNESS DOES NOT DOUBT HERSELF.**

Aria ignored him.

"I think you did it," Jacqui replied, "and if you'd cared about my opinion, you would have asked me before, not now. Now we both live with it."

That wasn't fair at all.

The Vanguard had come to her with an offer: they had believers, they had money, and they had absolutely no leverage or face, after September. They needed a charismatic leader, someone people knew and trusted. Ibex had spoken well of her, recommended her for the position. The procedure to become Candidate of Righteousness was demanding, to be sure— _What?_ Aria had said, and laughed.

None of the Vanguard were laughing.

And what else did Aria Joie have going on? The Chime had gotten by well enough, but odd jobs with just Jacqui—without Cass's planning (which had probably been mostly ass-pulls anyway), without Mako's hacking, without Audy waiting in the Kingdom Come to haul them out of the fire—couldn't pay the bills forever. Poverty wasn't romantic at all! Jacqui had gone back to wherever she'd come from for a few months to settle her affairs, whatever those were.

The Vanguard had wanted an answer that minute. So there had been a surgery. Three months' recovery, half of which had been spent waiting to see if she'd even survive becoming candidate. Another month to learn to function day-to-day around Righteousness's constant whispers. Ibex had stayed with her the whole time, and disappeared to parts unknown the moment she could handle herself.

 **HE DID THIS ALONE. MOST DO,** Righteousness said to her, the day Ibex left. **YOU ARE FORTUNATE, CANDIDATE.**

 **YOU ARE FORTUNATE,** he said, again, here, in the hotel room. **YOU ARE FORTUNATE THAT YOU ARE NOT ALONE. BE KIND TO HER. SHE CANNOT UNDERSTAND US.**

*

"Candidate," Cass said.

"Apokine," Aria said.

A pause, slightly too long. Then the two of them laughed, carefully, as though they weren't facing one another in their mechs in the middle of an asteroid belt, far from either of their retinues. It had taken a month to set this up, to arrange a time and place when their tours of the Golden Branch would align and let them do this. Cass had brought it up—a meeting, just the two of them, coffee, maybe, no, they drank tea, _she_ drank coffee—and over a week of texts it had become this. Training, like the old days, when they'd go outside the domes on Counterweight and wail on each other. If nothing else, they could pretend.

"Hey!" she said, before it could get awkward, and sent off a flare from the Regent by way of greeting.

"Hey," they said, at last.

They sounded tired. They looked it, in the tiny display projected above the Righteous Regent's control panel. The silver laurels they wore were drooping to one side, and Aria wished she could reach through the Mesh, across space, and straighten it out. Aria Joie could have done it for Cassander Timaeus Berenice; Candidate Joie couldn't, not for the head of the Demarchy.

"Mako said you had some things for me from Joypark," she said, and flipped a switch, just to have something to do with her hands. Whoever had designed the Regent—she'd never bothered to find out who it was, now that she thought about it—had known enough about her to install parts she could just fiddle with: being an idol was a lot of waiting.

"The master copies of your records, the, uh, physicals," Cass said. Through the Brilliance's narrow viewport, she thought she saw his mech flying toward her: a streak of clean white in the black. "I didn't even know they had physicals. Do you know how hard it is to get a forwarding address for the Candidate of Righteousness? Even _Ibex_ had somewhere people could send stuff to."

"Did he really?"

"No, but it would have been hilarious. Mako would have sent him a dead fish."

She saw the blip of Apokine coming toward her on her tactical readout. She pulled up a larger display, a view of the belt, and saw nothing. Cass knew how she fought. He knew she relied more on visual data than on what the Regent's sensors told her: in the skies of Counterweight, this hadn't been a problem, but here in the void, surrounded by rocks, it would be. Apokine dwarfed the Righteous Regent, for sure, but—

**IT HAS BEEN A LONG TIME SINCE I HAD A CANDIDATE WHO DIRTIED HER HANDS. SHALL WE BEGIN?**

—but the Regent was fast and maneuverable, and she knew how it moved in vacuum. The resolution increased on her tactical readout to show her Apokine's approach vector, the positions of asteroids relative to her trajectory, local gravity flux. She minimized it. Righteousness couldn't taint this for her; Righteousness had not spread to every part of her life; what she had out here, when Apokine appeared from the shadows of an asteroid, sword drawn, it was _hers,_ and hers alone.

*

"I can't protect you from him," Ibex said. "If I die, he'll jump to you completely. For the moment, what I can do is teach you what I had to learn myself: how to create a space where he can't touch you."

"Sure," Aria said, weakly. Pain erased language; pain erased mind. She thought she'd learned that when she'd lost her arm. She'd known nothing.

Ibex had retained exactly fifty-one percent of Righteousness, whatever that meant—maybe Mako would have understood, god, she should have talked to Mako about this first! He would have told her it was stupid—to ensure that the Vanguard would never be without a head. A dramatic return to the spotlight would be a powerful gesture, he'd explained to her, when the Vanguard had brought her to him.

"You need a place in your mind he can't touch, and you need a place in your _life_ he can't touch." Ibex gave her hand another squeeze. "The worst of it is coming."

It came.

"Why are you here?" Aria asked, once it was over.

Ibex was silent for a long time.

"Because I'm tired, and you're strong," he said, finally. She wasn't. She _wasn't,_ but there was a conviction in Ibex's voice that made her want to believe him. But that was just Ibex. It was what he did. Probably he couldn't even turn it off.

"And maybe," he added, "Rigour isn't the only Divine that needs to die. Get some rest, Candidate. We start tomorrow."


End file.
